


Memory Meme

by headlesshorsepossum



Category: Original Work
Genre: Abuse, Betrayal, Brainwashing, Character Death, Childhood Memories, Cults, Eye Trauma, Homelessness, Sexual Harassment, Trauma, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-30
Updated: 2020-06-30
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:28:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 6,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24997603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/headlesshorsepossum/pseuds/headlesshorsepossum
Summary: Fills for a meme on tumblr by justanotherrpgmeme dot tumblr dot com, featuring characters from my three original works, The Cafe at the End of the World, The Winter King's Ward, and Blood of the Father. I'll update the tags as I post them.
Kudos: 3





	1. A Childhood Memory

**Author's Note:**

> Chapter One is A Childhood Memory, feat. Rona Cowl from Blood of the Father.
> 
> TW in this chapter for homelessness; mild gore; sexual harassment.

Rona is thirteen, and this is her first time inside a building in a month.

She’s more used to outdoors, by now, but it never gets this cold down here usually so she isn’t used to it; her trousers are too thin to keep the chill out and she shuffles into the shelter because otherwise she thinks she’ll shiver herself apart. There’s a fee—there’s always a fee—and she hands over the coins she’s spent months scrounging together in exchange for a night in a room full of strangers with hate in her heart; shows the man taking the money her teeth because she’s too tired to spit in his hand.

The soup they hand her is hot so she’ll eat it but it sits in her belly like lead, heavy with cream that’s thicker than anything she’s had in too many months; it warms her stiff fingers and chest, and places like this never keep enough bathrooms, so she knows it’ll be their problem as much as hers before too long, so she gulps it down out of half desperation and half spite. Possibly those are the only feelings she has left. They’re certainly the only ones that have ever done her any good.

Rona has not seen her own reflection in—well, she doesn’t know, that would be a stupid thing to keep track of—but she knows the cracked wreckage of her teeth and the matted tangle of her hair, thin and transparent-pale, she can feel those even if she can’t see them; and all she has to do is look at most of the tired and quiet men and women shuffling around the room and they leave her the whole table to eat her too-thick soup in peace, which is all she wants, really.

But it’s the coldest night of the year and the shelter is full, and the soup is taking her too long to eat because it’s almost hard to swallow; so before too long a girl joins her at her table, not much older than Rona and stray-cat nervous, looking at nothing but her own bowl and her own jittery hands, twisting together or around the spoon, never holding still.

Rona doesn’t look at her; she only looks at people she wants to scare away, so she doesn’t really know how to do anything else.

The next person who takes a seat at Rona’s table is a man, and he passes over five empty seats to sit right next to the girl, who goes tense as a wire.

He asks her her name and she stammers out something Rona almost can’t understand; Rona only kind of speaks the language and hasn’t had cause to speak or listen to anyone much in years. The man laughs, close enough to the girl for her to feel his breath on her face, and tells her he’s just being friendly. The girl quakes like a leafless tree in a high wind, and when the man’s arm slips behind her back, she mutters, “Please don’t,” so quietly Rona can barely hear it and it’s easy for the man to ignore, laughing his animal laugh again.

“Hey,” Rona says, not loudly. The girl’s eyes flicker over to her, big and scared. The man doesn’t look at her. “Fuck off. Nobody wants you here.”

The man gestures at Rona without looking at her, flicking his hand like he’s shooing a dog away. “Back off, freak,” he says, and then he sets his hand down on the table.

The girl looks at Rona. Her eyes are wide and dark.

They give out plastic utensils at all these sorts of places, because they think people like Rona are a danger to themselves and others. It’s very stupid; you can do all kinds of things with a plastic knife. It just depends on where and how hard.

Rona jams it between the bones of the man’s hand. The plastic splinters, but not until after its broken the skin. If his laugh was like an animal, his squeal sounds like a man, loud and pathetic. The people serving the soup move forward, yelling, and he is on his feet immediately, cradling his hand against his skinny chest and howling at Rona, who watches him dance from her seat, letting the immediate crowd form around her. The dark-eyed girl slips into it, out of sight.

They don’t throw Rona out in the cold, because apparently the man has “caused problems” before, but it’s clear from the staff’s sideways looks that she’s right on the edge of it. That’s alright. She’s always on the edge of it; they always look at her teeth and know she bites.

She’s curling up in stained borrowed blankets in the corner of the room when she realizes the dark-eyed girl is standing in front of her, holding her own blanket and fidgeting, not meeting Rona’s eyes.

“Can I—Do you think I could sleep by you?” she says softly. Rona stares.

She’s used to frightening people. Most of the time it’s at least a little on purpose. It has not until this moment occurred to her that the same things that frighten some people might make others feel safe.

Rona nods without speaking. In the middle of the freezing night when the dark-eyed girl shudders awake, Rona reaches out and takes her hand.


	2. A Fading Memory

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Feat. Thorne from The Winter King's Ward.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for: parental death, implied dubcon/unhealthy power dynamics.

Thorne will never tell Morden that he remembers this.

Morden is… has always been very sympathetic about where Thorne came from and what Thorne is, and though Morden has never said so, at least not in so many words, Thorne knows that he has always been disappointed with how little Thorne knows or remembers about his… unusual parentage. That was the first thing Morden asked him, how close his Fae ancestry was, how much he knew about Fae, if he knew where to find any full-blooded Fae survivors. Thorne said he knew none, which was true. He also told him he remembered very little of his childhood or family, that he could not even say for sure if any of them were Fae. 

That part was… less true.

What didn’t occur to Thorne at the time, but frightens him deeply now, is that memories last best when shared. A person keeps memories by speaking them; to tell a story often is to carve it on your heart. 

It took Thorne so long to realize this that she is nearly gone, he’s worn her away with ten full years of holding her too close. 

This is what Thorne still has of his mother:

Her hair was the color of starlight. His own is silver, shines in the light, he knows it pleases his Master; but his mother’s hair was white as unbroken snow or the stars on a winter night. Her skin was dark, like his, and she cropped her hair short around her chin, just long enough for him to tug when he was very small. 

Thorne’s mother loved music. This is what has let him keep her, that he remembers her humming in the kitchen of their little wooden house, remembers trying to sneak behind her and fool her sharp ears— pointed, like his, but even more so, twitchy and expressive in a way his are not— and hearing her hum, and forgetting his intention, sitting on the kitchen floor instead to listen; that she saw him when she spun to reach for dried herbs hanging from the ceiling and laughed at his wide fascinated eyes and stopped to teach him the song, and burned their dinner. He doesn’t remember the words, but he still has the tune.

And she loved his father, of whom Thorne has even less, a memory of broad shoulders and rough but gentle hands. She loved to dance and his father was clumsy but easy for her to coax into joining her; Thorne remembers his small hands in both of theirs and both of them lifting him easily to swing between them; he almost remembers his father’s laugh.

His mother had teeth like his, pointed like a dog’s, but he never saw her bare them except on the last day, when she pushed him into the cupboard and said— something he doesn’t remember, presumably an order to stay put—that her eyes were gold like his and they flashed like fire and she bared her teeth and he was frightened of her; frightened of his beautiful star-haired mother and not of the unknown voices that filled the small wooden house.

That’s all he remembers of the day she died. He knows there was more once; at first he wanted to forget and now it’s far too late to get it back.

It is the only thing Thorne has withheld from his Master. He has given his years and his body and his heart, and been—been glad to give them, of course. But he could not give up his star-haired mother and her soft voice, her crinkly nose when she laughed, even if he wasn’t sure why.

Morden is disappointed; accepts within the first weeks of Thorne’s apprenticeship that, Fae blood or no, he already knows more about Fae than Thorne does, and begins, graciously, to teach him; and Thorne lets him, for of course he _doesn’t_ know, knows of nothing except his mother—and even of her he knows less and less.

He never speaks of her, to anyone, except on cold nights when he sleeps on his pallet in the Nest instead of in his master’s bed; then he pulls open the curtains to look at the stars and repeats it to himself, so not to lose it: _Her hair was the color of starlight. Her voice was warm and safe. Her nose wrinkled when she laughed, and she loved me, she loved me, she loved me._


	3. A Vivid Memory

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Feat. Paxon Field from The Cafe at the End of the World

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for: eye trauma, gore, implied unhealthy relationship dynamics, minor character death/murder.

Here’s a fun fact for free: turns out having your eye cut out is something you don’t forget, ever.

This was… what, five years ago now? Six? Pax was nineteen at the very oldest; no one makes them keep track of their birthdays so they generally Don’t, and age is one of those things you start to forget when nobody asks about it anymore.

They wish Losing Your Eye was also one of those things, but that one remains as clear as the day it happened. They dream about the sensations maybe once a week. More if they’re stressed, and these days they’re stressed more often than they’re not.

The dream starts three seconds before the action. They’re losing the fight already. They’re five years scrawnier and five years dumber than they will be when the world ends; the lab has “private security” and the guy they’re fighting now has a knife. The guy’s face is long gone from Pax’s memory, but they can picture that knife any time they close their eyes; if only because it looked so much like nothing, a little wink of dull silver they see in his hand about two seconds before he brings up his fist for what looks like an uppercut, and Pax moves back a second too late, and the knife tears up through their cheek and half of their world goes red.

Pax remembers stumbling back, and screaming, half-collapsing against the wall; they remember the second knife-in-fist punch, between their ribs this time, which they can hardly feel because their face has been sliced open, is gushing already between their shocked fingers, hot and wet and terrible, the sharpest sickest pain they’ve ever felt; they feel themself go to their knees, holding themself up off the floor with one hand while they try to hold their eye in with the other. 

Then the fist swings in front of their face again, glint of metal still between the fingers, and they throw themself backward, scrambling on the floor for the gun they dropped when they fell, and swing it up into the security guard’s face, and fire three times out of pure panic, so in fairness the guy who fucked their eye gets fucked back even worse.

That is a thought that comes later, obviously. At the time their brain is empty except for screaming. It’s more and worse than pain—they can feel the edges of the wound, feel the back of their eye in a way they know is wrong wrong wrong, and the second the security guard hits the ground they lean over and throw up, their hand still jammed over-and-half-in their eye and their other arm barely holding them up. Then they scoot back away from the corpse they just made—they’re not used to making corpses yet—and collapse against the wall, pressing on the wound as best they can and too locked up with panic to do anything else.

They have no idea how long they spend there, and they don’t know whether they faint or if they’ve just lost a few minutes of memory there; in the dream it seems like they sit there breathing too hard for an eternity, pressing harder and harder on their socket to try to stop the bleeding and panicking even more at the pain and the worse terrible wetness against their hand, hearing nothing but their heart pounding in their ears.

They don’t remember seeing Vic arrive. They do remember his voice when he sees them, distressed, maybe disgusted. In retrospect, not very sympathetic.

“You fucking said you could handle this,” Vic says, sounding harried, not far from panic himself. Now Pax can see him, remembers looking up at him desperately, the way they still saw him back then: here’s an adult. Here’s someone who loves me.

 _“Vic,”_ Pax says. They try to push themselves upright against the wall, fall back into what they now realize is a spreading puddle of blood. “Vic, God, please, help me.”

“Fucking shit,” Vic says. He runs his hand through his hair. This is the messiest Pax has ever seen it in public. And it might actually be the first times Pax has heard him swear. “You idiot. I fucking knew you weren’t ready. Shit.”

Vic is holding a briefcase under his arm. Which means he found what he came for. He looks at Pax without stepping any closer. Then he reaches for the waistband of his trousers and he pulls out a gun.

Pax stares at him. Four hours ago Vic kissed their neck and told them he was grateful they’d come with him. Now he looks nothing more than embarrassed and the gun is pointed at their forehead. 

“This is my fucking life’s work,” Vic says. “You idiot.” Pax stares at him; presses their hand harder against their ruined eye. They can hear alarms going off, more than one, far away but getting nearer. “You idiot,” Vic says, and his voice breaks; he actually does sound sorry, now. “You fucking know I can’t let you ruin this for me.”

Pax will realize later that Vic means he can’t leave them there to talk to the cops. At the time Pax doesn’t have any idea what he’s talking about; because they’re trying to hold their eye in and their boss—boyfriend—sugar daddy, whatever, is pointing a gun at their head. They blink at him, their remaining eye very wide, and they say in a tiny voice, “I don’t— Vic, I don’t know—” and they can’t even finish the sentence.

Vic looks at them, and then his face creases with something—more than irritation, but miles less than grief, and says, “Sorry, Pax,” and lowers the gun a fraction before he pulls the trigger.

That, generally, is where the dream ends. Fair enough, Pax figures; they don’t need endless repeats of the hour they spent crawling between cabinets with paper towels stuffed into the gunshot wound Vic put in their chest. And they’re always embarrassed about the hour or so they spent in the woods behind the lab, sobbing and trying to convince themself that maybe he missed their heart on purpose, maybe he meant to give them one last chance.

By the time they make it to a payphone and then into an ambulance, that embarrassing bit of wishful thinking is looking pretty threadbare. They pass out in the ambulance with the beginnings of what will become familiar rage in their heart, and their last thought is, _I think I’m going to kill him._


	4. A Repressed Memory

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Feat. the Coven (and, secondarily, Rona) from Blood of the Father.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for: descriptions of underage whump, messy thought patterns around traumatic memories, learned helplessness, referenced parental death.

“Okay, look, let’s start with an easy one. How old are you?”

  * “I’m twenty-four years old,” Karim Mun says tonelessly, eyes on the one-way mirror but clearly seeing nothing. 
  * Selina Mun blinks her big frightened eyes. Her hands are twisted together on the metal table in front of her. “I’m sorry,” she says; her voice is smoky, lower than you’d think, a grown woman’s voice at odds with her little-girl outfit and her little-girl pigtails. “I do want to help. But I… will you tell me again what year it is now?”
  * Venita Bones purses her lips, glares down at the table, flexes her long-fingered manicured hands— then a slow flush spreads across her face, frustrated-defensive-ashamed, and she slowly shakes her head “no.”
  * Diana Farrow sighs deeply. “Look, get me a cigarette and I’ll tell you anything you want. I’m dying over here, darling.” She smiles when you pull a pack out of your pocket, and leans back in the folding chair after you give her a light, taking a deep drag and closing her eyes. She holds the cigarette like a 30s starlet, though it isn’t clear whether that’s on purpose or not. “I’m thirty-six,” she says around a smirk and a cloud of smoke. “You can write that in your notes but don’t spread it around, hmm? It’s impolite to ask a lady her age; even a lady detective should know that.”



“Okay, that’s— fine. How old were you when you met Micah Trent? How long ago was that?”

  * “I was—” Karim Mun frowns, as though he’s thinking very hard— so hard it hurts, maybe. “I— was— a junior.” He flops back in his chair, running a hand through his hair— it’s bleach-blonde, a similar shade to Trent’s, and limp with sweat by now. “I was a junior in high school,” he says, and he’s out of breath, like he’s just finished a long run. “It was the middle of the year. I didn’t finish the year out.”  


  * “It was—” Selina’s eyes are darting around the interview room now, like a trapped animals’; when she reaches a certain level of stress her voice changes, gets higher, like a cartoon baby voice. “I don’t know,” she says, shaking her head, her big eyes starting to get shiny and wet. “I don’t know, I don’t remember, I don’t know any of this. You’re making my head hurt.” She grips the edge of the table, hard; her nails are long and painted pink. “Karim’s here, you told me he was, he knows, ask him, ask my brother!”  

  * Venita Bones glares, and then, still flushed slightly with apparent embarrassment, she closes her eyes, and sits that way for a full minute, eyes closed, hands very still on the table, worrying her bottom lip with her sharp white teeth. Finally she heaves a frustrated sigh and opens her eyes, shaking her head. “I saw—I saw the Hannibal film in theatres two weeks before I met him. The first one. With Clarice.” She looks back down at the table. “That’s—that’s all there is. I’m sorry.”  

  * “Let’s see,” Diana Farrow says. She looks more serious now, holding the cigarette like it’s a lifeline. “I was after Venita and before Selina. That would have been— I don’t know, the noughties?” She sighs out a cloud of smoke, scratches at her temple with a long blood-colored fingernail. “I was in my twenties. Not twenty-five yet, I don’t think.” She laughs once, humorlessly. “That’s my official defense, Your Honor.”  




“Anything you can tell us about your initial meeting with Micah Trent is gonna help our case against him. Anything, even if you don’t think it’ll matter. Think hard, is there anything else you can tell me?”

_(Karim is sixteen. His father is dying and his mother has been home from work three hours this week. This is his second time in this bar, and the adrenaline from knowing he shouldn’t be there is the only thing holding him to the earth. He’s always halfway between wanting to be seen and feeling that if anyone looks at him he’ll burst into flames, but that’s even worse here, where he knows he shouldn’t be._

__

__

_The bartender sets a drink on the bar in front of him. Karim doesn’t know what it is, but it looks very expensive. The bartender gives him a look of mild disapproval, and nods toward the end of the bar._

_The man sitting at the end of the bar looks up from his own drink and looks at Karim— definitely looks at him, like he likes what he’s looking at. He smiles at Karim, slow and appreciative. He’s wearing the nicest suit Karim has ever seen.)_

_(Selina is sixteen. Karim has been missing for three days and then suddenly he is at her bedroom window, his eyes bright and more alive than she’s seen them in months, unable to keep still, smiling at her; his pupils are blown so wide she can’t see any color in his eyes at all._

_“He’s changed everything for me,” Karim is saying, his hands on her shoulders, grinning and manic and radiating so much energy she can’t tell if he’s nervous or excited or afraid. “Look, I promise you’ll like him, he’s wonderful, Leena, I promise—")_

_(Venita is eighteen. They have just lowered her father into the ground. The family plot is beside a copse of trees and when she looks away from the gravediggers she sees a man in a dark suit looking at her, he meets her eyes and he nods slowly, his eyes shadow and heat, and she drifts over to him like an unmoored ship or a wandering spirit._

_“I know the men who did this,” he says into her ear, his breath hot against her cheek. “I can show you how to make them pay— if that’s what you truly desire. If you’re willing to leave all this,” and he gestures at her mother, eyes vacant behind her veil, “behind you.”)_

_(Diana is twenty-three. This is the dullest party she has ever attended. She knows, already, that his name is Micah; she does not know the women with him, the plain girl in the Victorian-doll dress and the redhead, who is the most beautiful woman she has ever seen. He sees her watching and approaches, already carrying two glasses of champagne. He hands her a glass with a smile full of secrets._

_“I’ve heard a lot about you, Mr. Trent,” she says, accepting the glass, and his smile widens to show his perfect white teeth._

_“I’ll wager you haven’t heard the best part,” he says, leaning close to speak into her ear.”)_

  * “I was— at— a bar? No, that can’t be right, I wasn’t old enough, dammit—”  

  * “I don’t remember, you’ve asked me too many questions, I want to see my _brother—”_  

  * “He told me… he told me… he offered me something that I wanted, I can— I will remember—”  




“Look.” Diana Farrow breathes out smoke. “What did you say your name was again, Detective?”

“It’s Agent Cowl. And I’m not actually a detective.” 

“Ah. Apologies, then.” Diana looks down at the cigarette in her hand, the most serious you’ve seen her so far. “You want the truth, Agent Cowl?”

You raise your eyebrows. “This is an official investigation, so that’d be nice, yeah.”

“Then here it is.” She pulls another cigarette out of the pack and you light it for her, because why not. “There’s innocent blood all over that compound, Agent Cowl, and none of it’s mine. There’s no way to tell you anything much Our Father without showing you how much of that blood is smeared all over me. So before I start for real I want your word on something.”

It’s been a long night of increasingly depressing interviews. You shake your own cigarette out of the pack while you wait for her to name her terms.

She waits for you to meet her eyes. When you do, she says, “I want Venita and Selina off. I want your word you’ll send them home. They didn’t ask for any of this and don’t want them getting worse than Karim does just because he broke a little sooner.”

“I can’t guarantee that. …but I’ll do my best for them. That you can have my word on.”

Diana Farrow sighs again, taps cigarette ash onto the table. “Fine. I guess that’s all I can fucking ask, huh?” She takes another long drag, like she’s gathering her strength. “Alright, Agent Cowl,” she says. “Here’s what I remember.”


	5. An Eye-Opening Memory

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Feat. Morden Crane from The Winter King's Ward.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for: murder…? it’s not very graphic but somebody gets burned alive. Also brief gore.

When Morden Crane is seventeen, he falls in love, and he never falls out of it.

He’s been sneaking old books under the table at work for months, reading magical theory between customers at the floundering old bookshop, but none of it has prepared him for the feeling of fire pouring from the palms of his hands, shot through with purple, the searing joy of seeing the violet spark and knowing that must be _his_ color, the color of his magical aura, that the fire is _his;_ his heart soars so high that for a long ecstatic moment he forgets that he has directed the fire at a person, which is how Morden kills his first human being, leaves the guard who grabbed him by the shoulder a smoking husk on the cobblestones. Morden blinks at him—at the life he’s ended with his heart and his soul and the palms of his hands—and feels nothing but warm surprising _rightness_ for a full thirty seconds before the guard’s fellows catch up with him and an iron-tipped arrow tears into his shoulder, pushing him half-over backwards.

When he stumbles to his feet and runs from the guards he’s already laughing, and he finds that he can’t stop. He stumbles into walls and around corners, just barely ahead of the guards but no longer afraid of them, because he cannot stop looking at his hands; they are long fingered, delicate, lily-white, with callouses only from writing, and you would not know to look at them that they hold more power than any of the armored men pursuing him will ever wield.

Morden has lived and worked in this city for almost a year, and now he can leave it behind without a second thought, because everything has changed. He always knew he deserved more than he has been given, that much is not a surprise; but before he had thought that he needed the city to give it to him, needed the rich men and the nobles and the king in order to get what he is owed.

But now he knows the truth, which is that he doesn’t need anyone.

The guards are easy enough to outrun; the fierce joy in Morden’s heart is burning so brightly that he can hardly feel the much fainter burn from the arrow in his shoulder, and he runs a random circuitous route through the streets and alleys of the city, until he’s less than a block away from the city gates. Now a little distraction wouldn’t go amiss, something to keep the rest of the city guard busy while he shakes the dust of the Capitol from his feet. Morden grins, and closes his eyes: he remembers the feeling of calling his heart’s fire better than he remembers what his own face looks like in a mirror. He takes in a deep breath, and holds out his hands, and reaches inward for the angry embers always burning in his heart (this is not what I deserve, how dare you look down your nose at me, _this is not what I deserve_ ) and pictures blowing them into a proper flame with a slow exhale.

Except this time, nothing happens.

For a long and terrible moment the greatest joy of Morden’s life thus far is chased out by the greatest horror he has ever felt, because to have such power for only a moment and then lose it is something he does not think he can _survive—_ and then he remembers why the city guards use iron-tipped arrows in the first place, and he closes his fist around the shaft of the arrow in his shoulder and yanks it brutally forward; it rips out of his shoulder in a spray of blood and pain that Morden almost doesn’t feel because the second the iron is no longer touching him his hands ignite again; the shaft of the arrow goes up like dry paper and the iron head clinks to the ground, blood-stained but harmless.

Before he sets the buildings around him alight, Morden looks down at his hands, now the centers of twin balls of purple-tinted fire. His heart is full, for the first time in his life, with so much love that his eyes prickle suddenly with tears. He is in love with his own hands and heart and aura and with magic itself, with whatever unseen force has looked at him and seen what so few others have believed: that he is worthy. That he is _deserving._

As the city guards round the corner of the alley, Morden begins to laugh again, bright child’s laughter, and the flames in his hands grow, and keep growing.


	6. A Memory That Involves Romance/Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Feat. Art and Karim from Blood of the Father.
> 
> (listen I have one couple who would have *memories* of love because they were already together before this started and I’m Feeling The Yearn today so this is very soft and I don’t apologize for that)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for: trauma-induced low self worth, referenced suicidal ideation/self-harm.

“I mean, jeez, Art, what’s it gonna take for you to trust me?” Karim says.

It’s at least half a joke. Art has known him for less than two weeks and is the most carefully guarded person Karim has ever met; Karim expects him to snap a reply to the effect of “trust wasn’t part of the deal, asshole,” but he doesn’t. He doesn’t say anything.

When Karim turns to look at Art, who he loves but doesn’t really know, Art is frowning, and it’s a strange expression, frustrated but also almost guilty.

“I,” Art says finally, and it sounds like an effort to push the word out. “I don’t know. It isn’t that… I kind of… I wouldn’t _mind.”_ He flushes, looks up at Karim through his eyelashes. “I kind of want. To trust you. I just—I don’t—I _don’t.”_ He looks away, twisting his hands together in his lap, and mutters, “Sorry.”

Karim stares down at him. Art is sitting on Karim’s bed with his knees pulled up to his chest, and Karim is forcibly reminded, again, that Art trusts him with his hands around his throat but not with his last name. It was frustrating at first, but that isn’t what it is now. He looks down at Art, who is fidgeting and not meeting his eyes, and he feels—warmth, and sorrow, and so much love it makes his chest hurt. 

He doesn’t know how to put any of that into words—his Father is always in despair at how bad Karim is with words—so instead he sits down on the bed in front of Art’s bare feet, and holds out his hand.

Art looks over at Karim’s hand, like he isn’t sure what to do with it, and then he slowly untangles his fingers from their nervous fists in his lap and puts his hand in Karim’s. Karim gives Art’s hand a squeeze, as gently as he can; so much of Art feels breakable as spun glass, if glass sometimes begged for you to break it.

“Don’t be sorry,” Karim says; he wills Art to look at him, and Art, against all odds, does, his big green eyes suspiciously shiny. “I’m not—It’s okay. I’m pretty sure the only way to prove I don’t wanna hurt you is to—keep trying not to hurt you.” He looks down at Art’s hand in his. They’re the same size—the fingers are the same length, anyway; but Art’s hand is much thinner, and Karim still feels like he dwarfs it. “I can’t promise I’ll be very good at it,” he admits.

Art is quiet for a long moment, and Karim feels weirdly like he can give him some degree of privacy by not looking up at his face. He plays with Art’s hand, instead, turning it hand over in his so he can see the torn cuticles and rough, bitten nails. His Father would never let him get away with fucking up his hands like this, he thinks, and he feels a swell of tired, confused affection so strong he almost wants to cry.

Art adds his other hand hesitantly to the bundle, touching Karim’s palm very lightly with his thin cool fingers. “I can’t promise it’ll work,” he says, his voice rough in a way that makes it sounds like Karim made the right decision in not looking at his face. “I can’t promise—I can’t promise it’ll be worth your time.”

Karim gives both Art’s hands another careful squeeze. He wants to say it will be; he wants to say a lot of things he knows Art won’t believe. “Luckily, time is one thing I've got in abundance,” he says lightly instead, because that’s indisputable. Art huffs out a weak laugh and then leans forward to rest his forehead against Karim’s. Karim closes his eyes, and he doesn’t let go of Art’s hands for a long, long time.


	7. A Memory of Death/Loss

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Feat. Andry Fourshield from The Winter King's Ward.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for: near death experience, discussion of death, child abuse/murder, referenced gore, referenced flogging/whipping, referenced captivity and humiliation, fantasy religious themes.

“What was it _like?”_

Very carefully, Andry turns his head to stare at the priest. The old man records the Lady’s appearances and will now carefully transcribe her Choosing of Andry into carefully-stored and rarely-read books in the East Wing library. He is not asking about the Lady now. He is asking about the period of two-to-ten minutes between when Andry’s heart stopped beating and when the Lady restarted it for him.

The man meets Andry’s eyes with the hungry curiosity of a respected scholar, and Andry looks back at him with the nauseated horror of a teenage boy who has been condemned, flayed, and possessed within one twenty-four-hour period.

Cinth has been hovering by the fire in Andry’s sickroom, listening to him recount the Lady’s appearance with her back turned and her shoulders very stiff, and now she turns to look between Andry and the priest with narrowed eyes, and Andry, just able to look at her without straining the bandaged ruins of his back, gives her a look of distress before he can think better of it, and Cinth gets smoothly to her feet and crosses her arms, her face utterly impassive.

“Get out,” she says to the priest, and when he sputters and tries to assert his authority, she calmly turns back to the fire and pulls out the poker, and brandishes it at the old man in a perfect en-garde stance. 

“Get. Out,” Cinth says again, and the priest runs for the hills.

Andry is still burning with fever, and when Cinth turns back to him he mutters, “It was—I remember—”

“Shush,” Cinth tells him, and he sighs out a long grateful breath and gets to work forgetting what it feels like to be dead.

——

“What was it… like?”

It is more than a refusal to apologize. Audoine the Lion never even admits to feeling regret. This is not the whole of it; Andry is not even always certain it is the worst; Audoine has done many terrible things, killed many better men than Andry, and never admitted a single one was wrong.

But this, Andry realizes very abruptly, is too much.

They are eating at the table in the formal dining room. It is meant for entertaining important guests, and mercifully much smaller than the one-sided table in the Hall, but it is big enough to swallow the three of them whole—Asher, staring at his father with mute shock from his seat along one side, Andry, on his feet without deciding to be there, and Audoine, immediately reddening with shame masquerading as rage, are easily six feet apart around the ridiculous, overly-decorated table in the ridiculous, overly-decorated room.

“Asher,” Andry says, his voice measured but very flat. “I’ll meet you in our parlor, please.”

Asher’s eyes dart from his father back to Andry, and he stammers, “Will, will you, will you be a-al—”

“In a minute, Asher,” Andry snaps, and he will apologize for it later; Asher winces and takes to his heels; in this moment anger is crouched so hot in Andry's chest that he does not even have room for guilt.

Andry stands at the table; his father remains seated at the head of it; glaring down at his plate with his big clumsy hands crushing into fists around his silverware.

“Ask it again,” Andry says, his voice still utterly flat.

Audoine’s half-blind eyes dart up to glare at him, but he cannot hold Andry’s gaze for more than a few seconds; his shamed flush grows even darker.

“Ask me again how it felt when you killed me,” Andry says, and it is the first time he has heard the words spoken, by anyone.

Audoine the Lion hunches in around his full plate and says nothing, and Andry looks at him, at this dull old man who is lauded for bravery when he is the only one with a horse or a sword or a whip, and the surge of righteous outrage that lifted Andry to his feet drains out of him just as quickly; there is so little to the old man he can barely manage to be angry at him. 

Audoine does not ask again, and Andry leaves without a word.

——

“What was it like?” Thorne asks him, and it is so perfectly balanced between thoughtless curiosity and utter lack of remorse that Andry, lacking other options, starts to laugh. The sound is hoarse and terrible, but the amusement is real enough, even if it is too black and bitter to be pleasant in any way. It _is_ funny, when looked at in the right way; if only because Andry thought he was so trapped before, thought he had no options sitting at his father’s table with a god’s power in his pocket.

Thorne looks at him, surprised but not displeased; Thorne likes it when Andry pretends to be his friend instead of his Master’s pet; Andry thought he knew what hatred was before and that, really, is what is funniest of all. 

“I hardly know how to answer, Lord Wolf,” Andry says, anger useless and sour at the back of his throat. “It was cold, and it was dark, and then it was over.”

This is why Andry never wants to answer this question; the answer is never what these people expect, it is in fact very boring.

_(This is why Andry doesn’t want to answer: Tell us, Andry, say the men who held the whip, who let it fall without a word, who hold the leash around Andry’s neck; tell us, how did you enjoy it, being dead, as though it were some accident with which they were not involved, and Andry says nothing, because what he wants to say is, YOU KILLED ME, MY BLOOD IS ON YOUR HANDS, EVEN NOW YOU ARE WATCHING ME DIE AND DOING NOTHING.)_

Thorne looks mildly disappointed. “I apologize, my lord,” Andry says coldly before he can stop himself. “The next time my heart stops beating, I will try to pay better attention. Then, perhaps, I can give a more entertaining description of the experience.”


End file.
